Several of our executives gathered for a seminar on how to interact with the news media. The instructor cautioned that reporters are looking for attention-grabbing soundbites and are trained in “gotcha” questions in order to get one. Both the interviewer and interviewee know tight news program schedules only allow for a 15-second exchange, so it becomes a game, the former trying to elicit an eyebrow-raising quote, and the latter trying not to provide one. A key seminar take-away, then, was to know how to respond with a comment related to an entrapping question, rather than answering it directly.
The religious leaders of Jesus day were fluent in “gotcha.” It must have been a normally reliable dialect, for despite mounting failures to entrap Jesus through insincere interrogatories, they kept trying. In one such encounter, a group of Sadducees asked Jesus, if a married man died and his wife married the next oldest brother, and if this pattern continued down to the seventh brother, whose wife would she be in the resurrection? It was a taunting question, for this sect did not believe in life after death, and everyone knew it. How then did Jesus respond? First, He exposed the faulty premise to their question. “You are wrong,” He asserted, “because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”1 Then He spoke foundational truth: “As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”2 Yet the Sadducees clung to their defeated narrative, and rather asking Jesus about this hope, they “did not have the courage to question Him any longer about anything.”3
Jesus once asked the Jews who gathered to hear Him, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.”4 Therein lies one of the most common challenges to hearing God: Our flesh wants to hear what its “itching ears want to hear,”5 and rejects all other soundbites. But God’s thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours,6 and He would have us listen for them. “It is the Spirit who gives life;” said Jesus, “the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”7 God’s Word is good news—news we can trust. Tune in to the Spirit and hear for yourself.
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak . . .”—John 16:13.
“Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.” 8 Amen.
1 Matthew 22:29-30, emphasis added
2 Matthew 22:31-32
3 Luke 20:40 NASB
4 John 8:43, emphasis added
5 2 Timothy 4:3 NIV
6 Isaiah 55:8-9
7 John 6:63
8 Psalm 85:8
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Paul Nordman—Author 
One reply on “Good News Worth a Listen”
Q1.
What does this passage teach us about God?
A1.
This passage presents a multifaceted view of God as all-knowing, life-giving, truth-telling, and peace-offering, desiring an authentic relationship with humanity.
Q2.
What does this passage teach us about people?
A2.
This passage paints a nuanced picture of human nature as capable of both wisdom and folly, of seeking truth but also resisting it, and of the need for higher spiritual guidance to fully understand and live in accordance with divine principles.
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